


Bed of Roses

by JustAnotherUnderstudy



Series: This Should Totally Be A Thing [49]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Boss/Employee Relationship, Dysfunctional Relationships, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M | Olivia Mansfield Lives, Older Man/Younger Woman, Older Woman/Younger Man, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-01
Updated: 2020-02-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:40:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22502656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustAnotherUnderstudy/pseuds/JustAnotherUnderstudy
Summary: James had lost many people in his life, but he'd always managed to come back from the pain. Losing M is not something he even wants to come back from.
Relationships: James Bond/M, James Bond/M | Olivia Mansfield, James Bond/Madeleine Swann
Series: This Should Totally Be A Thing [49]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/579049
Comments: 6
Kudos: 12





	Bed of Roses

**Author's Note:**

> I'm depressed. Enjoy this manner of dealing with it.
> 
> Oh, and this is a follow up to Happy Christmas Pill.

_Sitting here wasted and wounded at this old piano  
_ _Trying hard to capture the moment this morning I don't know  
_ _'cause a bottle of vodka's still lodged in my hand  
_ _And some blonde gave me nightmares, I think that she's still in my bed  
_ _As I dream about movies they won't make of me when I'm dead_

* * *

James stared vacantly across the room. The vodka was doing it’s work nicely. He was nearly numb. If he could just drink enough to completely forget his circumstances, then he’d be content.

He had left Six with Madeleine six months earlier with the hope that getting away from everything that reminded him of his M would make the loss easier to bear. It hadn’t worked.

Yesterday had been his birthday. Madeleine made a huge fuss over it, even though he’d asked her not to. M had always respected his desire to be alone on that day. Madeleine dragged him to dinner and a show and then insisted on sex when they returned.

Madeleine was hellbent on fixing him. M had always fixed James, just not in the way Madeleine wanted. M patched up and rebuilt him so he could go out and be the killer he had been long before his first kill.

Madeleine told James he wasn’t a killer. He wanted that to be true. He wanted that to be the reason he hadn’t killed Franz when he knew _she_ would have wanted it. Now James couldn’t deny that the real reason he had let Franz live was because M wasn’t here to fix him and James had already killed so many people since the last time she had that he just couldn’t kill one more.

Or, he wondered, maybe he hadn’t killed Franz because Franz was the only person living who knew about James' relationship with M. That had been apparent when he’d found Madeleine inside M’s office safe room.

He had only fucked M once there. It had been the only birthday he’d spent with her. He’d begged and cajoled her playfully for nearly a year never expecting she’d acquiesce. Then she’d summoned him to her office late on his birthday with the promise of a mission.

Behind the locked door of her office, window dressings closed tightly, she had taken him by the hand and they’d locked themselves away for several hours as they made love in the one place she thought would be completely safe.

How Franz knew, James could only guess. If Silva had been able to hack the office, maybe he did share the information with Franz. It no longer mattered, because his M was dead.

He’d known it was inevitable, her death. He’d tried not to think about how quickly she seemed to be aging. Her work hadn’t suffered but, as the years had gone by, their lovemaking had to change. The change didn’t bother James, what the change meant did.

And then Turkey. And then he destroyed the only good thing he'd ever had in his life. And then nothing mattered.

James took another long drink.

A few more swallows, he thought, then he wouldn’t have to remember her rejection, or the fact that he deserved it.

* * *

_With an ironclad fist, I wake up and french kiss the morning  
_ _While some marching band keeps its own beat in my head while we're talking  
_ _About all of the things that I long to believe  
_ _About love, the truth, what you mean to me  
_ _And the truth is, baby you're all that I need_

* * *

“James?”

He heard a voice call to him. In the haze of the alcohol he couldn’t place it.

“James?”

“M?”

It was her. It had to be. She had come to take him to wherever the hell she was. She’d come to fix him just like she used to.

He felt the bottle leave his hand and her fingers brush gently across his forehead. He sighed as he reached up for her.

“M,” he said as he took her hand.

But something was wrong with her hand. It was slender and smooth and cold. M’s hands were never any of those things. She ran hot, hotter than James most days. When she touched him he would let her heat consume him.

James forced his eyes open and gasped at what he saw.

It wasn’t M at all. Madeleine was smiling down at him.

“I didn’t mean to frighten you,” she said softly. “Why are you out here?”

She cast a glance at the bottle of vodka on the table and turned back to him, the question in her eyes went unasked but James knew she wanted an answer.

“Told you,” he slurred. “Nothing on my birthday.”

She shook her head.

“James, you need to talk about it,” she admonished.

He had. Years ago he’d told his M. She hadn’t demanded it. He wanted her to know because he trusted her.

He didn’t want Madeleine to know because, for whatever reason—possibly because she was White’s daughter, possibly because she kept trying to fix him—he still didn’t trust her.

Madeleine stood and James hoped she’d leave and he could finish the vodka. Instead she crawled onto the chair he was sitting in and straddled his lap.

As she began to kiss him. James moaned, but not in pleasure. He just wanted to be left alone. He wanted to think of his M and how she always knew what he needed.

“Come back to bed,” Madeleine said.

She crawled off his lap and James gave up the fight before he even started. He stumbled after her and fell into the bed. Madeleine curled up against him but in the darkness James imagined it was M.

From the beginning of their sexual relationship he and M had both surprised the other by their need for physical touch. Neither had ever been the sort to hold another close at any point, but they had held each other as much as they could when they were in private.

Madeleine assumed his touch was for her, but most of the time it was mere muscle memory and his mind thought he was reaching for M.

His mind tricked him again as he drifted to sleep next to Madeleine. He always dreamed of _her_ when this happened. He could feel _her_ touch and hear _her_ sighs as if they were really together, making love the way they used to.

The pain of reality upon waking was starting to be too much. He’d have to stock up on the vodka. He needed something to ease the pain.

* * *

_I wanna lay you down in a bed of roses  
_ _For tonight I'll sleep on a bed of nails  
_ _I want to be just as close as, the Holy Ghost is  
_ _And lay you down on a bed of roses_

* * *

**MI6, Q Department**

Q listened to the tape again. Though he had already run the voice recognition program and confirmed his suspicions, he still found it difficult to believe.

He’d never been able to settle his mind after the former M’s death. It seemed odd to have a closed casket funeral for someone who’d had no facial damage at death. Then there was the matter of the DVD that Bond had received just days after M’s funeral.

In the middle of sorting those thoughts, Moneypenny told Q about the glass bulldog on Bond’s coffee table and where it had come from. That reminded Q of the day Bond returned to active duty.

That evening, Q had gone up to M’s office. As he walked down the hall, he’d heard James talking to someone in his own office. He could have sworn he’d heard the agent say, “I loved you.”

Deciding it would be wise to make his presence known since sneaking up on a 00 was certainly not going to end well for him, he called to Bond before turning into his office.

There had been no one else in the room. Even the desk was bare of anything but a porcelain bulldog.

Q pressed a button to listen again to the recording of the current M speaking to his predecessor.

_“Bond’s returned to London,” the current M said._

_“I don’t get out much so that will hardly be an issue,” the former M said._

_“Look, I just think it would still be a good idea if you left the country for a while,” the current M said._

_“I quite like London in the winter,” the former M said. “The coats and umbrellas will make it even more difficult for him to spot me should we accidentally be in the same place.”_

A button on his console began to flash and Q pressed it. A map of London came up on his screen. The trace had finally given him an exact location of the former M’s call.

Q glanced down at his cellphone then back at the map. After a moment’s hesitation, he picked up the phone and sent a text to Bond.

“Call me about that old bulldog you loved.”

**Author's Note:**

> Song by Bon Jovi.


End file.
